Fenerbahce and Crystal Palace Will Tell Us a Lot About This Liverpool Side

A five match winning run across all competitions came to an end at Anfield, and the manner of the defeat left Andoni Iraola more frustrated than the scoreline alone might suggest. Kai Havertz scored after sixteen minutes from a low Declan Rice delivery, and from there Liverpool spent the rest of the game trying to find an equaliser that never arrived, despite a flashpoint in the build up to one of their best chances that referee Andy Madley and VAR both chose to ignore.

A penalty shout that will not die down

The moment in question saw Jurrien Timber pull at Alexander Isak inside the box, and Iraola made his feelings clear afterwards without much hesitation. He argued that the reluctance to give the decision simply because Isak stayed on his feet is exactly the kind of inconsistency that frustrates coaches up and down the country. It is a view plenty of neutral observers would share. Decisions like that one tend to be judged on outcome rather than principle, and Liverpool were on the wrong side of that this time.

What should not get lost in the penalty debate is that Liverpool did generate real chances of their own. Florian Wirtz struck the bar from a free kick. Alexis Mac Allister headed over from a position Iraola rated as a clear opportunity. There was enough territory and enough pressure to suggest this was not a performance lacking in intent. It was a performance lacking in the finishing touch that turns pressure into goals, and that gap has now shown up in back to back league defeats.

The home form question will not go away

Four goals scored in five Premier League matches at Anfield this season is a number that undercuts any serious title talk, and falling nine points behind the league leaders at this stage starts to apply real pressure to every fixture that follows. Iraola was careful not to make excuses about any of it. His honesty about the missed chances, paired with his anger about the officiating, paints a picture of a manager who knows his team should have taken something from the game regardless of what the officials decided.

Two tests that come at the right moment

There was at least one thing Iraola took from the afternoon that he was happy with, describing his side’s reaction after going behind as a positive sign even in defeat. That sort of response will need repeating quickly, because Liverpool now head into a Champions League trip to Fenerbahce in midweek before a tricky visit to Crystal Palace the following Sunday. Neither game offers much margin for the kind of slow finishing that cost them against Arsenal. Bad calls happen over the course of a season and so does wasteful finishing in front of goal, but when both arrive in the same afternoon the result tends to go the way this one did. The next week will show whether Liverpool have actually learned anything from it, or whether the same conversation is waiting to happen again.